Today, Terry
O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, will lead a
candlelight vigil to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the
landmark Supreme Court decision that recognized women's fundamental right to an
abortion.

In a recent
statement, O'Neill said: "NOW affirms that women's access to the full range of
reproductive health services, including safe, legal, and affordable abortion is
integral to a woman's ability to participate equally in this
society."

I spoke with O'Neill
about the history, importance and continuing fight to beat back the Right's
continuing attempts to limit and undermine Roe v. Wade.

DB: I think we
should take this moment to remember some of the history around this landmark
legislation. Please set the scene: What was life like before Roe v. Wade, and
where did this battle start?

TO: Back in the late
1960s in Chicago, there was a young woman who was a student at the University of
Chicago. She became very concerned because of what she saw all around her. And
what she was seeing was her friends terrified of becoming pregnant, and needing
to terminate a pregnancy, and not being able to. So that's sort of a microcosmic
description, I think, of what life was like.

That individual, her
name was Heather Booth, in 1969, formed an organization called The Jane
Network, which was an organization of women that procured illegal but safe
abortions for women from about 1969 until about 1973. They performed something
like 11,000 or 12,000 abortions that were safe and medically appropriate, albeit
completely illegal. In 1973, the Supreme Court decided Roe versus
Wade.

The reality is that,
for decades, prior to the time that Roe was decided, women who wanted to
terminate a pregnancy would eventually wind up either continuing the pregnancy
against their will and being forced into childbirth against their will, or if
they found someone to perform an abortion, very often, it was really just a
predator.

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You couldn't be sure
whether you were going to a... someone with medical qualifications who could
terminate your pregnancy, or someone who was simply, a sadistic or a sociopathic
individual preying on women who were looking to terminate their pregnancies. It
was just horrific.

DB: And, it was
brutal, and bloody.

TO: And what
happened is, it's terrifying. I remember when I was a child sort of having the
impression that pregnancy was the punishment that women experienced for having
sex. That there was this, all of this, there was not only judgment but bloody,
and terrible, and terrifying punishments, if you had sex and then if you wanted
to terminate the pregnancy resulting from sex. It was a ridiculous means of
controlling women through terror. And that fundamentally is what Roe v. Wade was
intended to change. And it fundamentally did change.

DB: And in this
context, the suffering was immense, women were sent off to live with relatives,
they were hidden, this was really a very easy way to demonize women, while men
just sort of lived in the free world, if you will. So this was really a battle,
a key aspect of the battle, for women's liberation.

TO: Absolutely. And in upper-middle-class circles, a girl who was sent away, was universally understood
that she was being sent away from home, so that she could go to an unwed mothers
home, and be forced to bear a child, and then give that child up for
adoption.

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That actually is
what sort of happened to the woman who was Jane Roe, in the Roe v Wade case. She
was not able to terminate her pregnancy, and she had the baby, and she decided
to give the baby up for adoption, and she simply wanted to hold the baby, have
some kind of good-bye. And it was, "Oh, no..." They whisked it away from her. Women really were treated either like children, or certainly like, as if they
were less than human. When they are not able to take control of their health
care needs.

DB: Before we talk
about the current status, and the battle that continues apace for so many women,
and to have this opportunity. So Roe v Wade was passed? Tell us just a little
bit about that battle. What was that like?

TO: Well, it was
really interesting, because from the late 1960s until 1973 when the decision
came down, there was just enormous legislative work and advocacy around
decriminalizing Roe v Wade. State after state after state had begun, even before
decriminalizing abortion. Before Roe v. Wade was decided New York State passed a
law decriminalizing abortion. A number of other states followed suit even before
Roe.

Dennis J
Bernstein is the host and executive
producer of Flashpoints, a daily news magazine broadcast on Pacifica Radio. He
is an award-winning investigative reporter,
essayist and poet. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York
Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, and (more...)